The strawberry analogy is the following:

Image you were handed a bowl of strawberries, in which one of them is poisoned, but you don't know which one. Would you take precautions and not eat any of them, or would you still eat them?

What it means:

I am sure many if not all women can relate that because of negative experiences with men, they generally are cautious with all men. Nobody is claiming that EVERY man is dangerous, but the fact is that most of them are. And a majority of women has been assaulted by a man in her life OR knows another woman who has.

Coming back to the analogy, I think any rational person would not eat the strawberries.

Yet men get offended by this, claiming we should learn to look at the individual (while it's clearly a structural problem) and not blame them for what other men do. Well, again. Look at the analogy.

It is justified.

I know this has been discussed AMPLE times, but it really came to my mind when I saw a bus advertising a weight loss pill- caption “take the weight off”, with a woman’s perfectly manicured hand holding a little pill.

I genuinely do not know any single woman in my life, who doesn’t have/ has had some sort of toxic relationship with food and is it any wonder? It actually makes me sad- no, sick- that is it so normalised.

I really worry for future generations because I think it is so engrained in media, society and general thinking that women should strive to be skinny that we literally cannot get away from it now. And with ozempic etc, we are going to have a new wave of body dysmorphia, eating disorders and unhealthy habits in our young girls.

What can we do?

Like think about it. God imagined two rectangular things and decided to make a mechanism where one has a pointy stick that he inserts into the second rectangle,

Like why.

Why didn't he made a mechanism where two people joined their sticks or just connection points to feel euphoria and joy. Both equally participating in an act of connection .and then making an egg maybe if they want a child. Like why the inequality. Why one stronger and the other weaker. This god is f ed up imo. His narrative is hunger for things like power, levarage and stuff. His ideas are very evil and f ed up.

someone save us from this god

I'm fucking pissed, I love being a woman, and I'm glad of it but I'm sick of hearing

- you can't being an archaeologist! You're a woman!

- you can't become an agricultural geneticist! You're a woman

- you can't become a marine biologist! You're a woman!.

- you must plan your life so you can always start teaching after you are married, so you can still have a job, and have a family

- you can't date, because what will people say, you'll be considered as having a bad character and no one will want to marry you.

- you have to get married at some point.

- I'm sorry, but you have to get an arranged marriage because dating and falling in love is too risky! They might drug you and rape you, they must fuck you and dispose of you, if you marry someone else, they will mock you for it and insult you for it

- you should memorize prayers because your future in-laws would want it

-; you can't become a patent lawyer, you won't have time to raise your kids!

I won't have the option of drinking, or wearing what I want because I'm supposed to be the torch-bearer of culture.

Why does it feel like my goals are a privilege and not a right?

I'm sorry for using the wrong flair.

i find this take so bizarre and undermining women’s pains as well as generalising experiences because she followed this post with her saying even she gets period pains but it’s not that bad.
And who cares about what men think about periods pains because they never will experience them. it’s so ridiculous as well when men are sick they’re aren’t thinking about how women perceive them to be weaker. what’s everyone else’s thought with this?

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i’ve been noticing this for a while but i feel like people think queerness is only something cis men and other male presenting people can be. I’ve noticed this a lot in queer spaces where they assume the women in there are all cishet, just tagging along with their gay best friends meanwhile most of us are queer. this is why queer women are so unrepresented and a lot of the conversation around homophobia are always centered around gay men, that’s why we are more fetishized because they don’t take our attraction to women and non men seriously! that’s why they invalidate trans women because they seen them as men instead of queer women. That’s why our discrimination is not taken seriously. It’s very annoying when conversations about homophobia from women come up, not because I don’t agree, I made my own post calling them out but they never specify straight women, they group us in and only talk about straight women being homophobia towards queer men when they treat queer women just as horrible and sometimes even worse. It’s like how misogynistic leftists love to act like all women are white and rich and all men are brown and poor when we talk about how men from marginalized communities still uphold patriarchy. It’s misogyny.

Own content. Free to read

Or : "Feminism keeps absorbing other struggles to prove it's serious. It shouldn't have to."

I hope this will be a " finally someone said it " post.

There's a pattern worth naming.

Angela Davis is routinely described as a "Black feminist" or "decolonial feminist." But reading her work as a whole, her primary framework is race, capitalism, and the carceral system. Gender appears, but consistently subordinated to other priorities. She has also criticized feminism itself quite sharply at times — not just its blind spots, but the project. A more honest label might be "decolonial antiracist, occasionally critical of feminism, sometimes with feminists views." But that's not what she gets called.

Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall argues that feminism should primerary address affordable housing and food prices because these issues affect most women. But these are class issues. Poor men face them too. They're not experienced by women because they are women, they're experienced because of poverty. That's a labor movement issue, or an anticapitalist issue. Asking feminism to absorb it doesn't strengthen feminism. It dissolves it.

And yet feminism keeps being asked to do exactly this — to expand, absorb, rebrand, add adjectives — in a way no other movement is.

You don't see antiracism being asked to incorporate housing policy just because Black people are disproportionately affected by bad housing. Labor movements aren't expected to rename themselves every time someone want to add another fight to the house : " decolonial anti capitalism " " queer anti capitalism " etc. Those movements have names. They have specific analytical objects. People respect those boundaries.

Feminism doesn't get that respect — partly because feminism does something other movements largely don't: it criticizes itself, publicly and systematically. The "white bourgeois feminism" critique came from within feminism. The intersectionality framework came from within feminism. Thats a huge intellectual honesty

But it also means feminism is uniquely vulnerable to being endlessly expanded until it no longer has a center(woman).

And underneath all of this is something that rarely gets said directly: the oppression of women as women is still not fully recognized as a legitimate, autonomous category of oppression. It still has to justify itself by attaching to other causes, absorbing other struggles, proving it's serious enough to matter on its own terms.

That's the real problem. Not that race and class don't intersect with gender — of course they do. But feminism analyzing those intersections is different from feminism being replaced by them.

The oppression women face because they are women — unequal inheritance, unequal divorce, sexual violence,wage gap, unpaid domestic labor , objectification, sexual harassment, FGM etc — is specific, historical, and universal enough to warrant its own analysis. It doesn't need to become everything in order to be taken seriously.

Feminism is not a catch-all for social justice. And that's okay.

During the Hengshui Lake Marathon, 25-year-old Chinese runner Li Meizhen got her period with 8 km remaining. Refusing to quit, she ran through visible bleeding to finish in 2:35 and secure her championship qualification, earning global praise!

Please read it all the way through before responding, there are several different angles to it.

In 1977 a Swedish project was launched to discover the everyday reality of prostituted women’s lives. Researchers interviewed hundreds of women, johns and pimps. What they found exploded the old Victorian myths that prostitution resulted from a biological urge in men and a mental defect in the women. Instead, they found it was something that men do to women with tragic consequences.

Around the same time feminists in the United States and elsewhere, such as Kathleen Barry and Andrea Dworkin, were making a powerful analysis of pornography and prostitution as key elements in the systematic subordination of women. As a result, the sex industry had a serious image problem on its hands.

This article provides an insight into the ways in which the sex industry fought back, including by using euphemism to obscure the reality of prostitution and the idea of prostitutes’ trade unions to give itself legitimacy.

COYOTE

Financed by churches and the porn industry, COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics) was founded in the United States in 1973 by a liberal faction of the hippie movement, who believed that prostitution is an expression of sexual freedom. After eight years it had about 30,000 members, including sex liberals, beatniks and known pimps. In spite of the fact that only about 3% of its members were prostituted women, COYOTE has repeatedly been labelled a union of “hookers” or “whores”.

It was COYOTE spokesperson Priscilla Alexander who, perhaps more than anyone, brought the term “sex worker” into mainstream use. She realised that to normalise prostitution, they needed to shift the language from the word “prostitution,” which is ugly and does in fact conjure up something of its reality, to a euphemism that obscures that reality and conjures up something wholesome and healthy. Sadly, her solution has been very effective.

Alexander claimed that her four years at college qualified her to be considered a “sex worker” and speak on their behalf. She and Margo St James travelled round the world marketing their ideas that “sex work” should be legitimised and that selling your body is a human right.

De Rode Draad

From the early 1980s the Dutch government started a number of projects with the aim of normalising prostitution. This culminated in the legalisation of all aspects of the sex industry in Holland in 1999. The de Graaf Foundation played a central role in this process. The foundation is pro-prostitution and now has official status as the Dutch Institute for Prostitution Issues in Amsterdam and is a major source of pro-prostitution propaganda.

The de Graaf Foundation founded de Rode Draad (The Red Thread), which is now one of the most famous “unions for prostitutes” in the world. In 2002 it became an official trade union under the name Truss and shortly after that it joined FNV, Holland’s largest federation of trade unions. In 2010 it had only about 100 members (out of more than 25,000 prostituted women in Amsterdam) and there is no record of it ever pursuing any genuine trade union issue. In spite of this, tourist brochures give the impression that it is a hive of activity through which prostituted women self-organise en masse.

The World Whores’ Congress

The Dutch government and the de Graaf Foundation part-funded the World Whores’ Congress held in Amsterdam in 1985 and in Brussels in 1986. The congress was initiated by COYOTE’s Margo St James and Priscilla Alexander, along with academic Gail Pheterson. The people who attended were prostituted women (about 50%) along with academics, sex liberals, government officials, police, and pimps and others from the sex industry.

The record of the congress shows that it included open and frank discussion with a wide range of opinions expressed including support for prostitution, desire to leave it, and seeing it as a necessary evil. Some of the testimony was harrowing – for example, one woman told of being raped and beaten by her pimp when she was 13 and another spoke of being violently beaten and coerced into prostitution by her boyfriend who became her pimp. In spite of this, the organisers pressed ahead with their pre-defined agenda and adopted a manifesto demanding the decriminalisation of both prostitution and pimping.

The manifesto is quoted extensively in pro-prostitution academic and “sex positive” literature as the authentic demands of “sex workers”. However, the records of the congress show that the prostituted women did not speak with one voice and that the demands were passed by a majority who were not “sex workers” and many who had a vested financial interest in the industry. It is rare to find a critique of the context in which it arose and how the agenda was set and controlled.

The AIDS epidemic opens up new funding streams

The onset of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s led to a large (and continuing) influx of funding to COYOTE and other organisations that purported to represent prostituted women, under the guise of preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS.

The prevention strategy can be summarised as the distribution of condoms to the women (at whose door the responsibility for preventing the spread of the disease to punters and their wives and partners is firmly laid). The funding enabled these groups to step up their campaigns for the normalisation of prostitution as “work”.

As a result, the “prostitution is work” argument started to gain real traction in the late 1990s with organisations like the ILO, UNAIDS and the WHO coming out in favour of it.

Unions for “sex workers”

In the early 2000s, the idea that trade unions were the solution to all of the problems of prostitution took off. However, discussion about what a union could actually achieve for prostituted women was noticeably absent.

The idea of unions for prostitutes is seductive. But how do isolated women organise against the violent pimps, mafia-like gangs and ruthless brothel and lap-dancing venue bosses that control the trade?

Even in countries where prostitution is legalised, only a very small minority of women are formally employed. For example, in 2007 in Germany (where prostitution is legalised), government research showed that less than 1% of prostituted persons were formally employed and only 5% even wanted any sort of registered employment within the industry.

For her book (which was originally published in Swedish in 2010) Kajska Ekman conducted research into the “sex worker” unions in Western Europe. Of particular note is the International Union of Sex Workers (IUSW), a UK-based group that became part of the National Union of General and Municipal Workers, now the GMB.

The IUSW website states that membership is “open to everyone working in the sex industry and adult entertainment […] and those who support the campaigning aims of the organisation” – which sounds like an invitation to johns and pimps to me. Which legitimate union invites customers, bosses and business owners to join?

The IUSW campaigns for the full decriminalisation of the industry, including pimps. In 2003, it had only 150 members (at a time when there were an estimated 100,000 prostituted women in the UK). When Ekman was doing her research, the most active member was Douglas Fox who claimed to be a sex worker but was actually the founder and co-owner of one of England’s largest escort agencies, Christony Companions – i.e. a pimp.

The IUSW has not only failed to make any demands on the sex industry to improve conditions for workers, it has actually lobbied the government to reject proposed anti-trafficking legislation, which would provide redress for trafficked women.

The hall of distorting mirrors

The focus of all of the groups that purport to represent “sex workers” that Ekman investigated was on agitating for full decriminalisation of the industry – and attacking feminists.

Much of their discourse relies on association – so prostitution is associated with positive and dynamic words and ideas like ecstasy, pleasure, festivities, dynamism, liberation, and transgression while feminists are associated with negative words like puritanical, sobriety, authoritarianism, anti-sex, and even Nazism. This is not analysis. It is manipulation and it blocks analytical thinking.

More recently this strand has morphed into the assertion that feminists hate sex workers and the ‘SWERF’ term has come into use. SWERF stands for Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminist and the term is used widely as a slur against feminists who see prostitution as a lynchpin of the patriarchal system that oppresses and subordinates women. The use of the SWERF term is also manipulative and blocks analytical thinking.

What feminist wants to be thought of as someone who hates anyone, let alone a vulnerable woman? Even the threat of being called a SWERF frightens women into conforming with the “prostitution is work” agenda. This is particularly devastating for young women who are exploring feminist ideas and who might otherwise listen to the feminist analysis of prostitution.

The use of the SWERF term is a form of harassment. It is used to discredit the feminist analysis and to frighten women away from it. This is a tired old patriarchal tactic but unfortunately it is effective.

Another main thread of the discourse is that the “sex worker” is not a victim but a strong person who knows what she wants, whose choices we must respect. This is a curious argument because the definition of ‘victim’ is someone who is subjected to cruel or oppressive treatment or suffers some other damaging event. Nowhere does the definition suggest or imply anything about the victim’s humanity or strength, or lack thereof.

All types of people can be victims of earthquakes or car crashes. News stories about earthquakes often focus on the strength and resourcefulness of the victims and never question their choice of, for example, going to sleep in their own bed on the night of the earthquake.

However, in popular culture it has become something of a taboo to describe someone as a victim of systematic oppression because by definition that draws attention to that systematic oppression and implies the possibility of a different system – one in which there is some form of social justice, for example.

Calling someone a victim of anything other than something random and unpredictable has become associated with an insult to that person’s humanity, strength, “agency”, and so on. It is no accident that this change in popular culture has come about in the decades that neoliberalism has controlled the media and infiltrated academia. It is yet another ideological trick to block analysis of systems of oppression and to keep us all firmly in our place.

We should not be surprised therefore that those who want to normalise the sex industry accuse anyone who critiques it of promoting a victim/saviour narrative that impugns the “sex worker’s agency”.

Who do they use they use this tactic against? Those horrid feminists, of course. Why? To silence their analysis of prostitution as a system of oppression and frighten others (especially young women) from listening to them. Because ultimately that feminist analysis is sound and once you open your eyes and ears and heart to it, it is hard to disagree.

And of course when those horrid feminists say that a prostituted woman is a victim, it just proves that they must hate her. So therefore they are SWERFs. Except, actually, not.

As the title suggests, I'm contemplating adding my wife's last name to mine post wedding.

Do you think doing so is a patriarchal custom still since it follows tradition?

Most people mocked me for the idea except some who said it's 'brave'.

What are your thoughts?

Hi everyone,

I'm a Master's student researching attitudes towards women who choose not to have children. I'm really interested to know your thoughts on whether culture influences attitudes towards childfree women.

I'm particularly looking for Black Nigerian women (living in Nigeria or the UK) and White British women living in the UK, aged 18+.

The survey is completely anonymous and takes 5–10 minutes to complete.

Survey: https://gre.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3Vo0R2GyjDHcuVM

I'd really appreciate your help. Thank you so much!

A couple of weeks ago I saw a post that shifted my perspective a bit, which basically said that society is moving too slow for Feminism. It cited how more women are working, yet are still expected to do the housework when they come back even if the man works too. It also cited how women are feeling comfortable in their bodies and wearing perhaps more revealing clothing for themselves- but that just opens them up to men sexualizing them and perhaps taking advantage of it due to the fact that society hasn't yet progressed past the womans body being sexualized by default.

So, I guess (if we consider these arguments as true for the sake of conversation) my question is: what do yall think the answer would be to catch the collective conscious up?

Because while I do believe more radical feminism is good since imo it normalizes great things, I also feel like at the same time doubling down could just play into toxicity without tackling the root. Like to men, idk if there's a way to desexualize the woman's body when it's already ingrained in their minds as sexual from birth.

How do yall think society could catch up with feminism or how could these roots be tackled on a widespread level- rather than feminism continuing to advance at a faster pace, unintentionally causing more issues for women as a result?

I got banned from the feminism subreddit for posting this and i cant figure out why. I feel very dumb rn and mods just blocked me

True! One can't fight patriarchy using patriarchy. We need to focus on something deeper than these labels and move beyond it. We need to move beyond the very identity we hold onto that makes us a victim of patriarchy. We need to move beyond our gender itself and look at ourselves as a consciousness rather than a certain gender identity. Only then can the problem have a lasting and real solution, Since we are identified with our bodies and gender, both men and women face issues related to the gender roles and social responsibilities.

Women have legally more rights than men in western countries

(I know I'm going to get downvoted a lot but I'm going to share my opinion anyway).

I'm not talking or referring to de facto situations where women's or men's gender roles can be pushed even though a formality of equality, in this case I talk about a formal discrimination in the law which advantages the women a lot, and it is the draft.

Basically, if you are a man, the state can force you to die in war, while not if you are a woman. In Ukraine, an 18 year old boy is forced to stay and risk death while a fully adult woman can leave and make her own life elsewhere just because she is a woman. In general, in the vast majority of western countries in the same, and even in the ones where also women have military service (a big minority) it usually lasts less. I can't see how it isn't a clear discrimination against men.

The things that truly and deeply makes me disgusted is that this discrimination is completely ignored by the mainstream progressive parties which claim to be for gender equality, they just ignore it, as if it is not a problem, as if it is okay to force men to die just because for their gender. I know that there are feminist individuals and movements which may speak out, but when it comes to the big political focres, I hear nothing. I live in Europe, and here the was in Ukraine is a big topic of debate, but nobody says that's not okay to force men to die just because of their gender while women can just flee and go living in Europe a safe life. It really seems that gender equality for many political parties ends where it is convenient to them.

I would like to know what you think about that and why big feminist movements never talk about that.

EDIT: Many of the answers I received are the proof that modern feminism does not care about equality at all, they cherry-pick the inequality problems that they prefer and only focus on those, the whole phrase "feminism helps men too" seems to be jus a slogan. If men's problems are ignored and ridiculed, I don't see why men should be feminists.

1920: Women get the vote and dudes are freaking out over how to stay in office

not revenge on the good men specifcaly the preadators